The Only Pirate at the Party

by Lindsey Stirling

  For the next several months I played every gig with Stomp on Melvin in front of a microphone. Although it increased my volume a little, I was still overpowered by all the electric guitars and crashing cymbals. After one of our first shows, my mom mentioned that she couldn’t hear a single note I had played.

  “It’s almost like you don’t need to be up there,” she said.

  “But I want to be up there,” I replied, feeling discouraged.

  Later, I brought up the idea of getting an electric violin, but it didn’t take. However, after coming to several more shows and watching me play silently onstage, my mom’s frustration got the best of her. She had, after all, paid for years of lessons—she wanted to hear me play.

  We went to the music store where she found a Yamaha electric violin with a scratch, which we got at a discount. In the words of my mother, “What a gonga!” She says it means bargain, but it’s really just a word she created to make secondhand shopping sound cool.

  Another word that dominated my mom’s vocabulary was inappropriate. It was the kiss of death from my parents, and their definition of the word was all encompassing. Being out past midnight—inappropriate. Using the words shut up or fart—inappropriate. Going camping with platonic guy friends—inappropriate. Wearing sandals to church—inappropriate.

  When I asked my mom if I could go on tour with Stomp on Melvin that summer she didn’t even pause.

  “No, no. It’s—”

  “Mom, please, don’t say it.”

  “Well it is, Lindsey. . . . It’s inappropriate.”

  The word was acid to my ears. When my dad got home from work he looked sympathetic to my plea, but his response was equally disappointing.

  “You’re sixteen, you shouldn’t be driving across the country with four older boys. Your mom is right—”

  “No, Dad, don’t—”

  “It’s inappropriate.”

  “Stop using that word!”

  A few days later my parents came into my room and told me I could go on tour on one condition. I was elated. “Anything!”

  “Your mom has to go with you.”

  Okay, I know I said “anything,” but not a chance. I didn’t even consider it. I never told the guys about the offer, but somehow they heard about it. And somehow, it was settled. My mom was coming on tour. I remember getting ready to leave and feeling so annoyed in that “Moms ruin everything” kind of way, but if my someday sixteen-year-old daughter were to ask me to go on the road with a few cute dudes, my answer would also be “Your mom has to go with you.” My mom is the cat’s pajamas—I just hadn’t realized it yet.

  In an attempt to give us a little space, she decided to drive separately behind Adam’s old van. She told me to ride with the boys, but even my teenage self wasn’t heartless enough to leave her alone in a car for eleven hours straight. I rode with her for a while until I felt like I had served my time. Then I jumped in the van with the boys and pretended my mom wasn’t fifteen feet behind us, eating corn nuts and listening to Harry Potter on tape.

  While I didn’t exactly want my mom there, the guys loved having her around and affectionately addressed her as “Lindsey’s mom.” In the following weeks, she turned into quite the handy roadie. She helped us load and unload our gear, she frequently worked our small merch table, and she was helpful during sound check (almost always advising that “Lindsey needs to be louder”). We traveled through Arizona, Utah, and Idaho where the boys had connections, and every night we all crashed in someone’s living room together.

  “Good night, kiddos,” she said.

  “Good night, Lindsey’s mom,” they replied.

  On top of being helpful as a roadie, my mom was also good at keeping away any unwanted guests. One night the guys invited some very attractive but highly annoying girls to hang out after the show. But once the ladies realized “Lindsey’s mom” was going to be hanging out, too, the evening lost some of its appeal. I gave her a mental high five and realized having my mom around wasn’t so bad after all.

  Being in the band was a lot of fun, but I always knew it would be temporary. When the boys graduated and moved off in different directions, I missed the good old days. Still, at the time I had only a small crush on performing. It wasn’t till a few years later that I really fell in love with it. It’s one of the few moments in my life I can pinpoint down to the millisecond that it happened.

  Every year my city puts on a Junior Miss Pageant in which senior girls can compete for scholarship money. I grew up watching friends and neighbors in my area participate, and when I was a senior in high school I couldn’t wait to get on the stage. Like most pageants, this one judged us in the categories of academics, interview, poise, talent, and a cheesy (but surprisingly difficult) fitness routine in place of the swimsuit portion. Don’t forget to smile during those crunches! But unlike most pageants, the focus of Junior Miss was to build confidence. For weeks, they worked with us—bringing in speakers and coaches who taught us how to walk, speak, and carry ourselves properly onstage. Luckily, being onstage didn’t scare me. But when we started rehearsing the talent portion I became discouraged. There were several other violinists in the competition, one of whom had been first chair in the All-State Orchestra for the past two years. Skill v. Skill, I knew she was a better musician. But it wasn’t only the violinists I was worried about. The pageant was full of amazingly talented girls who had fun and entertaining performances. There were Broadway singers, jazz dancers, and tumblers who had everyone smiling and clapping along in rehearsals. More than being a performer, I wanted to be an entertainer.

  “I wish I had a talent that could show my personality, something that could get people smiling and cheering,” I said to my mom one night.

  “Well, why can’t you do that with your violin?” she asked.

  “No one is going to clap along with a classical solo.”

  “I guess you better not play a classical solo then” was her response.

  In Stomp on Melvin, I had always played backup and simple harmonies, so it had never crossed my mind that the violin could be the lead in anything other than classical music. But my mom was right, why couldn’t it be? We started brainstorming, and I decided I was going to write a rock song for the violin. After I wrote the melody, I asked a friend of a friend for help with the backtrack. We had never met, but he came to my house, set up a mobile “recording studio” in my basement, and recorded drums, bass, and guitar. Zac Beus, bless your soul. With my upbeat backtrack and rock melody in place, I now had to find a way to engage the audience and the judges. I needed to smile, move, and maybe even . . . dance.

  Even when I was in a rock band, I never moved onstage. I didn’t know how to be animated without losing my concentration, so I stood like a statue. Unfortunately, standing still and playing with a serious facial expression was not an option for this performance. Even more confusing than a rock violinist would be a rock violinist who didn’t know how to rock.

  You wouldn’t believe the amount of concentration it took for me to smile while I played, let alone move my appendages independently of one another. In the following weeks I spent hours upon hours trying to pair basic movements with my playing—a step on the downbeat, a pop of the hip on the next, and a kick before the chorus. And my backbend? Unrecognizable. It was more like a back tilt—the backbend’s clumsy baby sister. No matter, it did the trick. When I started my performance on opening night, the audience went wild. A dancing moving violinist? Mind blown! One of the judges raised his hands above his head and got the whole crowd clapping on the beat—more or less—but even if they had terrible rhythm, it was electrifying. When I finished the last note I was filled with the most incredible energy I had ever felt. As I looked out over the roaring crowd and the smiling judges I knew it had worked—I had them entertained. More important, I knew I had to chase this feeling. I ended up winning the talent portion, as well as the local and state titles as Junior Miss. A few months later I went to the national competition as Arizona’s
Junior Miss, where I performed on an even bigger, brighter stage—winning a sum total that put me through almost two years of college.

  The scholarship money was a godsend for my family. But more valuable than the money was the moment of clarity after my performance, when I stood onstage as a solo artist for the very first time. I was head over heels.

  My evolution as a violinist has included many thrilling performances, and I still love what I do, but there are times when even I get burned out. When this happens, I go back to that moment ten years ago. I picture myself on the stage with my bow in the air. I feel my heart racing, I see the faces in the audience smiling, and I remember the moment I thought, I have to make this my life.

  THEY ARE

  NOT ADOPTED

  For a short time last year my brother lived in Georgia. When my tour passed through Atlanta, I put him with a plus-one on the guest list—at least I meant to. When the woman at will call told him (and his date) that he wasn’t on the list, he insisted.

  “I am her brother. Will you please look again? It is under Vladimir.”

  I should mention he looks nothing like me and has a thick Russian accent. His request sounded more like this:

  “I am her braw-ther. Vill you please luke again, it is under Vladi-meer.”

  Meanwhile, in my dressing room, I heard a woman’s voice coming through Erich’s (my tour manager’s) walkie-talkie.

  “There’s a foreign young man at will call, he claims to be the performer’s brother . . .”

  Erich looked at my apologetic face as he answered, “That’s correct, please let him in.”

  The summer after my senior year of high school, my parents came into an unexpected inheritance. Before it even arrived my sisters and I had all but spent it in our minds. Jennifer could plan her dream wedding, I was going to be debt-free in college, and Brooke wanted a horse trailer. There would probably even be enough leftover cash to refinish the floor in the kitchen, get air-conditioning for my dad’s car, and take my mom on that Alaskan cruise she had always dreamed of. Instead, my parents chose to spend the money on an adoption agency and three round-trips to Siberia. Typical Stephen and Diane. They were finished raising young children, so they decided to take on an even bigger challenge—two teenagers from Russia. There were a few complications with Marina’s adoption, so Vova arrived first, two months shy of his sixteenth birthday. By this time, I was getting ready to leave for college out of state, so I spent as much time with him as possible.

  I’d always imagined having a brother would entail living with a cool best friend who doubles as a yardman and sets up my tent on camping trips. Now, I just picture that monkey on YouTube that pees in his own mouth. A peeing monkey that I love, of course. One of the first things Vova did in America was roll down the back window and catcall (in Russian) at girls on the drive home from the airport. I was horrified. Oh heck no, not my brother. I tried explaining, “Noooo,” shaking my head back and forth in the universal negative gesture, Yelling is bad. Don’t be that guy. Girls don’t like that guy.

  He watched me pantomime about not being creepy for a minute then returned to the window to whistle at the next female we passed. Really? I thought. But I just told you that was frowned upon. I had spent most of my life wishing I had a cool brother, and he had spent most of his life trying to eat the food on his plate before someone stole it. I guess my expectations were a little high. Even if he wasn’t quite prepared to be the well-mannered, protective brother I imagined, he turned out to be exactly the kind of brother I needed. The kind that makes fart noises every time I bend over.

  Entertaining Vova was easy. He practically got off the plane dancing, and since he didn’t speak English, dance was a language we could both understand. My friends loved taking him places, too (so long as the window lock was on), because he was outgoing, and on the dance floor it was near impossible to keep him from spinning in circles on his head. He was our party trick.

  Connecting with Marina was a little more difficult. When she got to America I was already living in an eight-by-eight dorm room 650 miles away, and for a few years our relationship was limited to short holidays and family vacations. At first, these circumstances worked in my favor. While Brooke, Marina, and Vova struggled through the transition of re-creating the structure and dynamics of our nuclear family, I got to be the cool older sister who came home for a few days at a time and provided endless fun. We went shopping, got ice cream, and spent hours at the local ice-skating rink. Eventually, though, they navigated through the ups and downs of the new family dynamic at home, leaving me to be the disconnected older sister. I missed out on much of Marina’s life, but during my short visits I learned a few key facts about her. She loved tumbleweeds, hated using the handheld translator to communicate, and didn’t want anyone to know she was adopted.

  When Marina first expressed that she didn’t want us to use “the A word,” it was understandable. But avoiding the topic was sometimes (always) a challenge.

  Accents are a huge conversation starter. All day long, cashiers, clerks, waitresses, receptionists, bag boys, and the guys behind the ticket counter followed the same script.

  “How are you today?”

  [Generic response here.]

  “Great.”

  Then a beautiful teenager with exotic looks and an accent like warm honey walks up and BAM, new topic of conversation!

  The exchange usually went as follows:

  “I love her accent, where is she from?”

  When we said “Russia,” the follow-up question was always the same.

  “Oh, is she a foreign exchange student?”

  I’m going to remind you—Marina didn’t like it when we told people she was adopted. I agree with her, the word adopted is quite disjointed. I think it is the sound of the “p” next to the “t” that makes it so abrupt. Or perhaps she didn’t want complete strangers knowing personal details about her life for the sake of small talk. It made sense, but going places with her was like playing the board game Taboo: Explain the origin of your Russian sister without using the word adopted.

  When the foreign exchange student question surfaced, my mom would smile and say, “No, she’s my daughter.” Without fail, the person asking the question would pause, the gears turning in their head. But how can she be your daughter when she is clearly from another country? When my mom didn’t offer an explanation, they often asked, “Is she adopted?”

  My mom would smile and reply again, “She’s my daughter.”

  At first, these interactions were painfully awkward—watching my mom dance around the question, usually asked by some teen employee who was simply trying to engage with the customer. But in the grand scheme of things, it was a simple gesture. I’ve always appreciated a good game of Taboo.

  After my sophomore year of college, I took a year and a half off of school to be a missionary for my church in New York. When my mission ended, I had a few months to kill before the new semester started at Brigham Young University. In the interim, I moved back home to Arizona for a few months. Marina was attending the community college, and for the first time since she had been adopted come to America, we were living under the same roof. This time, I was the one reacclimating to normal life, and she took me shopping, out for ice cream, and to see all the movies I had missed over the last year and a half. Around that time I had started dating a guy who was perhaps too much of a gentleman. I wanted him to kiss me, but he wasn’t making any moves. One night, Marina and I ended up at the park in our pajamas with a gallon of Blue Bell ice cream and two disposable spoons. Between bites I expressed my frustration.

  “He’s just not getting the hint.”

  “Com’on, make him kiss you” was her reply.

  “I haven’t kissed a boy in years. I don’t remember how!”

  Marina had always been a bit of a mythical creature. Unlike me, she knew how to balance innocence with opportunity.

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “At the end of the night when he drops you off, hug him
. Let it linger a little, but not too long, and then pull your head back, but leave your arms around him.”

  She held up her spoon and gazed at it.

  “Look in his eyes, then look at his lips, and the magic will happen.”

  A few nights later, when I got home from my date, I woke her up.

  “Pst!” I whispered. “I made the magic happen!”

  She lifted her head slowly from the bed. “Get over here and tell me all about it, you little slut,” she whispered back.

  Since the day my family decided to adopt (I don’t know how else to say it!), I felt like her sister. I always knew I wanted to be there for her and build a friendship that could last a lifetime. But that night was the first time she felt like my sister.

  I know my relationship with Marina and Vova wasn’t formed under ideal circumstances, and sometimes I feel like I’ve been cheated. I missed their entire childhood, and I never got to manipulate them into doing my chores. I was in college and on my mission for most of their teenage years, and now we’re adults living separate lives on different sides of the country. For years I worried I might never have a close relationship with them, but I’ve since learned that love and family can trump time and circumstance. I love you, Vovi. And you too, Marini—you little slut.

  TWO

  THE “I WANT TO MAKE IT SO BAD I’LL SELL MY SOUL” PART, MIXED WITH A LITTLE “WHY DO I KEEP FAILING?”

  If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived.

  —JEFFREY R. HOLLAND

  SISTER

  STIRLING

  I never planned on serving a mission for my church1, it just sort of happened. In fact, when it came down to it, I never fully admitted I was going to go. In the months leading up to my departure, I responded to questions by saying I was “considering it” until, suddenly, I was standing in the Missionary Training Center and a little old lady was pinning a name tag on my blouse. Despite my previous reservations about leaving my home to preach the good word, it felt like the only place I should be at the time. I also thought serving people for a year and a half would make me a better, happier person. I was being selfishly selfless.